UK school tech show moves to Abu Dhabi

and consumers in the education industry, and there is a regularity and a quality to that debate in the UK. It has influenced more than the UK, it has influenced everybody globally.

"And when you are in a region like this where education is emerging and strengthening, just as the economies are emerging and strengthening, you need to put people together in professional associations, in meetings so they get to know each other and they get to adapt their solutions to their problems.

"So this is an essential conversation and I most certainly take part in it avidly because it feels like BETT felt like when it started."

The event was set up at the request of the Abu Dhabi Education Council. "They are extremely keen to reform and improve their school system out here," says Joe Willcox of show organisers EMAP Connect.

"And it's really a challenge for them to give educators working in the public schools a meaningful opportunity to use, experience and play with the technology."

He talks of the business interest in the "enormous potential of the region" for education providers.

There have already been reports of a boom in private education in the UAE, attracting overseas investors.

Export markets

This export drive is even more important for firms specialising in education technology and design when the UK has seen the cancellation of home-grown projects such as Building Schools for the Future.

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“Start Quote

Schools and teachers in the Middle East, Latin America and Asia are hungry for change and technological innovation. In fact many are further ahead in this than some of the former 'top nations'”

Chris Merrick Promethean

However, the importance of events like BETT Middle East goes further than a simple match of timely local needs to a simultaneous decline in European and US markets.

It also signifies the globalisation of learning and the organisations and companies which serve it. Promethean was once seen as a a relatively small UK supplier of interactive whiteboards. While observers were looking elsewhere it suddenly went global and now has offices worldwide, including in the Middle East and in Atlanta USA.

"We are not living in the old world of the UK and other elite Western economies versus the rest of the world any more," explains Promethean's head of international marketing, Chris Merrick.

"We are moving to a flat global society and economy. So it's not a case of let's do everything first in the UK and everyone can catch up, as once was the case. We have recognised that new ideas, innovation, and new methods of best practice are not just starting in the West any more; they are starting all over the world.

"The world is moving ahead in parallel, and BETT Middle East is evidence of that - schools and teachers in the Middle East, plus Latin America and Asia, are hungry for change and technological innovation. In fact many are further ahead in this than some of the former 'top nations'.

"That's why we have to be at events like BETT Middle East. As a global player we have to be part of that conversation."

Merlin John is an education technology writer and editor of Merlin John Online